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One In Fourteen Cancels. Mostly The Day Before.
How often, how late and on which days reservations are cancelled, and what a waitlist wins back.
HappyChef Datahub
Most reservations hold, but not all. In Belgian restaurants, one reservation in fourteen is cancelled before the visit, and four in ten of those cancellations come in the last 24 hours, too late to fill the table easily. Online reservations are cancelled more often than ones taken by phone, and Thursday is the day most plans change. A waitlist wins part of it back: almost three in ten requests become a reservation. These seven insights show what happens to a reservation before the guest arrives.
The Insights In This Article
- 7% Of Reservations Are Cancelled
- 40% Of Cancellations Come In The Last 24 Hours
- Online Reservations Are Cancelled More Often: 10.6%
- Couples And Big Groups Cancel Most
- Thursday Has The Most Cancellations, Wednesday The Fewest
- 28% Of Waitlist Requests Become A Reservation
- 82% Of Waitlist Requests Are For Friday Or Saturday
Insight 1 of 7
7% Of Reservations Are Cancelled
7% of reservations are cancelled before the visit, by the guest or by the restaurant: about one in 14.
| Group | Share |
|---|---|
| Kept | 93% |
| Cancelled | 7% |
- Period
- Visits from 1 January to 30 September 2026
- Datapoints
- 49,605
- Restaurants
- 35 Belgian restaurants
- Method
- A cancellation is a reservation removed before the visit, by the guest through their confirmation link or by the restaurant. Rate = cancelled ÷ (cancelled + kept), per restaurant with at least 100 reservations, averaged. Timing = hours between the cancellation and the reserved time.
Insight 2 of 7
40% Of Cancellations Come In The Last 24 Hours
35% of cancellations arrive less than 24 hours before the reserved time and another 5% only after it has passed. Together that is 40%. Only 5% are cancelled more than four weeks ahead.
| Group | Share | Datapoints |
|---|---|---|
| After the reserved time | 5% | 297 |
| Less than 24 hours before | 35.3% | 1,085 |
| 1–3 days before | 20.9% | 665 |
| 3–7 days before | 15.3% | 488 |
| 1–4 weeks before | 18% | 632 |
| More than 4 weeks before | 5.5% | 242 |
- Period
- Visits from 1 January to 30 September 2026
- Datapoints
- 49,605
- Restaurants
- 35 Belgian restaurants
- Method
- A cancellation is a reservation removed before the visit, by the guest through their confirmation link or by the restaurant. Rate = cancelled ÷ (cancelled + kept), per restaurant with at least 100 reservations, averaged. Timing = hours between the cancellation and the reserved time.
Insight 3 of 7
Online Reservations Are Cancelled More Often: 10.6%
10.6% of reservations made online by the guest are cancelled, against 7.1% of reservations entered by the restaurant. A phone call feels more binding than a click.
| Group | Share |
|---|---|
| Online by the guest | 10.6% |
| Entered by the restaurant | 7.1% |
- Period
- Visits from 1 January to 30 September 2026
- Datapoints
- 50,030
- Restaurants
- 44 Belgian restaurants
- Method
- Cancellation rate per booking channel, within each restaurant (at least 20 reservations per group), averaged.
Insight 4 of 7
Couples And Big Groups Cancel Most
Parties of one or two cancel 8.5% of the time and groups of nine or more 8.7%. Tables of three or four are the most reliable, at 6.6%.
| Group | Share |
|---|---|
| 1–2 | 8.5% |
| 3–4 | 6.6% |
| 5–6 | 6.7% |
| 7–8 | 7.1% |
| 9+ | 8.7% |
- Period
- Visits from 1 January to 30 September 2026
- Datapoints
- 50,030
- Restaurants
- 44 Belgian restaurants
- Method
- Cancellation rate per party size, within each restaurant (at least 20 reservations per group), averaged.
Insight 5 of 7
Thursday Has The Most Cancellations, Wednesday The Fewest
Visits on a Thursday are cancelled most often (8.1%), Wednesday visits least often (5.5%).
| Group | Share |
|---|---|
| Monday | 6.3% |
| Tuesday | 6% |
| Wednesday | 5.5% |
| Thursday | 8.1% |
| Friday | 6.9% |
| Saturday | 6.9% |
| Sunday | 7.4% |
- Period
- Visits from 1 January to 30 September 2026
- Datapoints
- 50,030
- Restaurants
- 44 Belgian restaurants
- Method
- Cancellation rate per weekday of the visit, within each restaurant (at least 20 reservations per group), averaged.
Insight 6 of 7
28% Of Waitlist Requests Become A Reservation
In restaurants that use a waitlist, 28% of requests turn into a confirmed reservation when a table frees up. A waitlist request counts 2.7 guests on average.
| Group | Share |
|---|---|
| Became a reservation | 28% |
| No table freed up | 72% |
- Period
- Visits from 1 January to 30 September 2026
- Datapoints
- 1,775
- Restaurants
- 9 Belgian restaurants
- Method
- Waitlist requests in restaurants that use the waitlist (at least 20 requests). A request that became a confirmed reservation counts as converted. Conversion per restaurant, averaged; the weekday split is averaged per restaurant too.
Insight 7 of 7
82% Of Waitlist Requests Are For Friday Or Saturday
Guests join the waitlist when the restaurant is full: 58% of requests are for a Saturday and 25% for a Friday, together 82%.
| Group | Share | Datapoints |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | 0.7% | 6 |
| Tuesday | 1.5% | 132 |
| Wednesday | 2% | 71 |
| Thursday | 3.8% | 203 |
| Friday | 24.7% | 429 |
| Saturday | 57.7% | 863 |
| Sunday | 9.6% | 71 |
- Period
- Visits from 1 January to 30 September 2026
- Datapoints
- 1,775
- Restaurants
- 9 Belgian restaurants
- Method
- Waitlist requests in restaurants that use the waitlist (at least 20 requests). A request that became a confirmed reservation counts as converted. Conversion per restaurant, averaged; the weekday split is averaged per restaurant too.
How We Built This Article
Period
Visits from 1 January to 30 September 2026
Datapoints
7 insights, each resting on at least 1,775 datapoints (the largest on 50,030), from 9–44 Belgian restaurants.
Method
Anonymous aggregates over Belgian HappyChef restaurants, each restaurant weighted equally, with every figure over at least five restaurants and 1,000 datapoints.
About This Data
This analysis is based on Belgian restaurants that use HappyChef: 9–44 restaurants, depending on the insight. Restaurants that joined during the period are normalised so the growing number of restaurants never inflates a trend, demo and test accounts are left out, and placeholder values (an empty field saved as zero) are ignored.
Every figure is an anonymous aggregate. Each one combines at least five restaurants and at least 1,000 datapoints, no restaurant is named or singled out, and no name, email address, phone number or remark of a guest is ever published.
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